Ah, Dostoevsky, my favorite. I agree with your insights here on both of these philosophers.

the world is meaningless — Ross Campbell

This, in my humble opinion, needs some qualification. Meaningless only in the sense that one wasn't conferred to you by, you know, a "higher power" whatever that means to you.

One can, as far as I can tell, always give ourselves a meaning of our own choosing. :chin:

Neither existentialist nor nihilist nor idealist ...

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

:death: :flower:

Very interesting, thanks for sharing this!

Ah, Dostoevsky, my favorite. I agree with your insights here on both of these philosophers. — The Questioning Bookworm

I am not sure that we agree on Dostoevsky's assessment. As a novelist he is an undoubted genius. As a thinker, he became fanatized because of his traumatic experience in Siberia. He is a classic case of Stockholm syndrome. His chauvinism, tsarism, anti-Semitism and anti-liberalism are easy to criticize. It is often said that they have no consequences in his writings. I don't think so. If we lose sight of the fact that Dostoevsky was an irrational Slavophile fundamentalist, we lose sight of half of what he wrote.

The same thing happens if we leave aside Camus' anti-communist colonialism.

I think we have to be consistent and recognise that literary admiration doesn't have to imply ideological admiration. Both Dostoevsky and Camus were contradictory characters, tormented by lights and shadows. More the first than the second, of course.

I did not know that about Dostoevsky, but from reading his works, I definitely feel the force of his work as a writer, author, and literary figure. But, in my experiences reading his texts, it is not just the literary force that strikes me, it is the dialogues and what he is representing often: humans existence and the questions, struggles, and suffering that they must reconcile or renounce within their lives. So, I feel the force of his philosophical love and observation of zooming into The Human Experience. Dostoevsky, in my opinion, also allows this to unfold for the reader in his character creation and the lengths he will go to get the reader so familiar with their personality, experiences, views, etc. Other philosophical novels I have read, especially in the existential camp, don't appear to have as much depth to its characters, plots, and conflicts as Dostoevsky. This doesn't make them necessarily better or worse, that is not what I am trying to get at. What I am trying to explain is that, for me, I think that his literary genius complements the philosophy he is bringing forth. He is not bringing forth a text that proclaims this or that, he is just zooming in on humans and what they experience in this absurd life, and to me, to be able to do that without preaching a bunch of views is brilliant from a philosophical standpoint as well.

:up:

I did not know that about Dostoevsky — The Questioning Bookworm

What do you think of someone that writes things like these? :

On the contrary, everyone knew that in his pious heart the liberating Tsar was making common cause with his people. Everyone waited with emotion and hope that the tsar would express his will, that his voice would be heard, while we, retired to our corners, rejoiced that the great Russian people had justified their immense and eternal hope that they had placed in him. (Diary of a Writer, 1877)

The virtue of the Russian woman is submission to her husband at all costs. (Diary of a Writer, August 1880).

If someone could prove to me that Christ is out of the truth, and if the truth really excluded Christ, I would prefer to stay with Christ and not with the truth. (Letter to Mrs. Fonvizina, 20 Feb. 1854).

But the Jews refused the correction and remained in all their former narrowness and inflexibility, and therefore instead of pan- humanness have turned into the enemies of humanity. (Letter to Yulia Abaza, June 1880)

Meaningless only in the sense that one wasn't conferred to you by, you know, a "higher power" whatever that means to you. — TheMadFool

When he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus Camus believed that life had no meaning, neither objective nor subjective. Not only that, but the human being lived in contradiction with the world (that is the absurd). This is the image of Sisyphus, condemned to the eternal exhausting and useless work of climbing a rock that falls as soon as it reaches the top. Both in The Stranger and in Caligula he tries to illustrate this idea and the result is an impression of permanent anguish. Camus' claim that this situation can produce some kind of happiness is unconvincing. He himself tried to counteract it in later works, but at the end of his life it reappeared in his diaries and in some stories in Exile and the Kingdom. It doesn't seem that he got rid of it completely.

In my opinion, the image of Sisyphus' absurd work is disturbing and difficult to erase. Because I don't think any happiness can be drawn from it. At some point in our lives one feels like a little Sisyphus. And then, what do you do?

When he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus Camus believed that life had no meaning, neither objective nor subjective. Not only that, but the human being lived in contradiction with the world (that is the absurd). This is the image of Sisyphus, condemned to the eternal exhausting and useless work of climbing a rock that falls as soon as it reaches the top. Both in The Stranger and in Caligula he tries to illustrate this idea and the result is an impression of permanent anguish. Camus' claim that this situation can produce some kind of happiness is unconvincing. He himself tried to counteract it in later works, but at the end of his life it reappeared in his diaries and in some stories in Exile and the Kingdom. It doesn't seem that he got rid of it completely.

In my opinion, the image of Sisyphus' absurd work is disturbing and difficult to erase. Because I don't think any happiness can be drawn from it. At some point in our lives one feels like a little Sisyphus. And then, what do you do? — David Mo

I don't know how to respond to this or if I can whether it'll be good enough to lessen our burden. Let's, for a moment, grace the Sisyphean scene - Sisyphus himself, the rock, and the hill - with the presence of Aphrodite (beauty) at the top of the hill. In every imaginable sense, Sisyphus' task is utterly devoid of meaning but now with Aphrodite sitting at the top of the hill, gorgeous blue eyes gazing at him, pouting her ruby lips, her flowing hair hugging the contours of her graceful body, and so on, there's something different, naturally, right - there's Aphrodite. The question is: between the rock and Sisyphus, does this difference, well, make a difference? The rock, doesn't matter how big or how ponderous or how whatever, can never appreciate Aphrodite's beauty but, despite Sisyphus' eternal burden, every time he reaches the top of the hill, he'll be in the presence of beauty personified. No matter how brief this encounter is, no matter how tired Sisyphus is, no matter how devoid of aesthetic sense Sisyphus is, it's my contention that the rock that Sisyphus is condemned to roll up the hill has it worse than Sisyphus. It's no longer an issue of how meaningful something can be but how meaningless things can get. :chin:

I don't know how to respond to this or if I can whether it'll be good enough to lessen our burden. — TheMadFool

Sisyphus' rock doesn't symbolize for Camus a particular burden that you can avoid. It is the absurdity of life itself. The only way to get rid of the rock is to commit suicide. This is what Camus discusses in his book.

Sisyphus' rock doesn't symbolize for Camus a particular burden that you can avoid. It is the absurdity of life itself. The only way to get rid of the rock is to commit suicide. This is what Camus discusses in his book. — David Mo

As I said:

I don't know how to respond to this or if I can whether it'll be good enough to lessen our burden. — TheMadFool

Thanks for the clarification although the meaninglessness of Sisyphus' task seems to be the condition that the rock rolls down on every occasion - the futility of his effort is what Sisyphus' meaningless existence is about, no?

As for the absurdity of life, it only is so if one seeks some kind of higher purpose understood in the sense of being a significant part of, having a role in, something "bigger" than yourself. I suppose it's a natural, even instinctive, desire for there are things "bigger" than oneself but surely one must consider, seriously indeed, that there's no necessity that one has to get that much sought after part in the grand scheme of things. And I suppose this is Camus' absurdity for he's ignored a possibility that is as real to the same extent, even more perhaps, as our desire for a "higher purpose". We're absurd alright but, in this sense, Camus is more absurd.

Thanks for the clarification although the meaninglessness of Sisyphus' task seems to be the condition that the rock rolls down on every occasion - the futility of his effort is what Sisyphus' meaningless existence is about, no? — TheMadFool

As for the absurdity of life, it only is so if one seeks some kind of higher purpose understood in the sense of being a significant part of, having a role in, something "bigger" than yourself. — TheMadFool

You are giving your own version of the absurd. This is not Camus' idea. For Camus the absurd is a feeling that emerges when man notices the unsolvable contradiction between his desires and reality. This is not something he can resolve by avoiding the contradiction. The contradiction is. For example: Camus was seriously ill since his adolescence. This was a constant threat until his death and prevented him from doing what he loved most in his life: playing football. Death itself is a sign of the common absurdity. Everyone will be immortal. Everyone knows that he will die. Other contradictions between desires and the real world are less dramatic but are constantly present in human life. These are what we can call irremediable frustrations. When this affects essential levels in important psychological and moral fields, we are faced with absurdity.

It is the rock that everyone carries with them. If the rock goes up and down it is not because you feel absurd in a psychological sense. It is the symbol of a real situation that you cannot change in the essential.

You are giving your own version of the absurd. — David Mo

Really, I have my very own version of the absurdity of life? What's yours then?

unsolvable contradiction between his desires and reality. — David Mo

I wonder how general the idea of Camusian absurdity is. Does it encompass all desires? Are all desires thwarted by reality? For instance, I wanted to smoke five minutes ago, and I did. I had a headache and wanted some Tylenol and I popped two into my mouth, washed them down with a glass of water. Of course the simple nature of these, my, desires aren't lost on me but, do you supppose they're counterexamples to your claim: "unsolvable contradiction between his desires and reality"?

Anyway, Camus seems to be mainly concerned about the meaning of life - our desire for it and the unwillingness of the universe to give us one. Sisyphus would've loved to find out that the rock at the top of the hill would amount to something in the sense either it is, in and of itself, an achievement or it's a step toward something else. That the rock rolls down again to the starting position means both these possibilities are null and void. Meaninglessness!

In my opinion, the image of Sisyphus' absurd work is disturbing and difficult to erase. Because I don't think any happiness can be drawn from it. At some point in our lives one feels like a little Sisyphus. And then, what do you do? — David Mo

Great insight here, however, I disagree that there can be no happiness drawn from it. From my experience, it increased my enjoyment and happiness in life based on the sole fact that he convinced me of my intuition - throughout my life - that life is in face absurd and meaningless. In other words, contradictions are apparent in every corner of life, and there is no universal meaning for anyone. This calmed my anxiety and depression to be quite frank. A lot of my anxious thoughts about life used to stem from me not living up to some meaning, standard, or expectations that most people do. This is irrational and anxiety-provoking in my opinion. The depression usually stemmed from my mind is in constant conflict over whether life had meaning or not for most of my life, and how contradictory and absurd people, life, and the world truly is. Parts of the book are disturbing, but, at the same time, I think they can be comforting - like were and are for me.

No matter how brief this encounter is, no matter how tired Sisyphus is, no matter how devoid of aesthetic sense Sisyphus is, it's my contention that the rock that Sisyphus is condemned to roll up the hill has it worse than Sisyphus. It's no longer an issue of how meaningful something can be but how meaningless things can get. — TheMadFool

This is a very interesting take. Thank you for sharing this. I haven't thought about the myth in this light yet, especially the part where you state:

It's no longer an issue of how meaningful something can be but how meaningless things can get. — TheMadFool

I think this definitely is a unique and beneficial way to look at the myth in the context Camus wants. Maybe there is some sort of range not in meaning but meaningless lives? Some people have it more contradictory than others in the world, but this would have to presume that contradiction/absurdity is the breaker of meaning in all accounts of lives under examination. I don't know if Camus and yourself are getting at this? What do you think?

Did you find joy in reading and taking in this book? Why or why not? Did you find it disturbance and a joy? How did it affect your lives initially, if you don't mind sharing?

I think this definitely is a unique and beneficial way to look at the myth in the context Camus wants — The Questioning Bookworm

I'm afraid it's uniqueness and benefit is outweighed by the fact that it's not really a choice and if one must insist that it is one, the old Camusian absurdity at play again, it's a Hobson's choice.

contradiction/absurdity — The Questioning Bookworm

I've always faced contradictions throughout my life, from the day I could, in my own small way, think, to this very moment. Our relationship, that between me and contradictions, can best be described as that between a moth and a flame - an irrestible urge in me, the moth, to dive headlong, with absolutely no concern for the dangers therein (I have a feeling that it induces insanity), into the burning flames of one contradiction after another after another. I've never managed to make even the slightest progress toward a resolution/solution for any one of them. Sisyphus, Camus?

As for absurdity, I once made a resolution of sorts - no, it wasn't New Year's day - that I wouldn't smile or laugh at a joke unless the punchline was a contradiction! I was, as it appears, a hardcore logic fan. This didn't work out very well for me for the simple reason that the contradictions didn't show up in the places where I wanted to or, more accurately, they appeared in all the wrong places. I wanted to roll on the floor laughing but there were no contradictions; there were contradictions but laughter, even a wee smile, was inappropriate. Sisyphus, Camus?

Really, I have my very own version of the absurdity of life? What's yours then? — TheMadFool

At least it does not coincide with Camus'. As I said, the absurd is above all a feeling. I sometimes feel like Camus. But not always. I'm not sure about your idea of absurd.

I wonder how general the idea of Camusian absurdity is. Does it encompass all desires? — TheMadFool

No. He only refers to those problems that are pressing for the human being in general and each one in particular.The fact of not hitting a pool or finding that there are no tickets for the theatre does not cause the absurdity that Camus spoke of.

In other words, contradictions are apparent in every corner of life, and there is no universal meaning for anyone. This calmed my anxiety and depression — The Questioning Bookworm

Why? The only way to overcome the anxiety produced by a vital desire that cannot be satisfied is to stop having it. But I believe that this recipe cannot be maintained for too long. May the stoics forgive me. There are desires for justice, for love, for the absence of pain that one cannot suppress without amputating a part of oneself. And this would be bad faith. If a man is as impassive as a lettuce he is not a man, he is a lettuce. At the very least, a lettuce is not happy. And it is happiness we are talking about. Isn't it?

Did you find joy in reading and taking in this book? — The Questioning Bookworm

An intellectual pleasure and a personal concern. 'Joy' is too strong a word that I reserve for personal relationships and other special circumstances.
In any case, it is not a book you can overlook.

As I said, the absurd is above all a feeling — David Mo

Care to expand on that? I thought it had and is supposed to have a sobering, depressing effect on us? I'm not sure. You tell me.

No. He only refers to those problems that are pressing for the human being in general and each one in particular.The fact of not hitting a pool or finding that there are no tickets for the theatre does not cause the absurdity that Camus spoke of. — David Mo

:ok: I don't think I have Camus figured out as well as I thought. Can you show me the way?

As I said, the absurd is above all a feeling — David Mo

Care to expand on that? I thought it had and is supposed to have a sobering, depressing effect on us? I'm not sure. — TheMadFool

We can accept a provisional definition of absurd in Camus.

The Absurd can be defined as a metaphysical tension or opposition that results from the presence of human consciousness—with its ever-pressing demand for order and meaning in life—in an essentially meaningless and indifferent universe. — David Simpson, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This tension manifests itself in a strong sense of the futility of human existence. (Note that meaning does not necessarily mean a religious or transcendent destiny. You can find meaning in pleasure or in the struggle for life).

Camus makes an extensive explanation of the absurdity in the Introduction to the Myth of Sisyphus. The book is half philosophy and half literature. Therefore it can sometimes seem poetic. This is Camus' way.

I have found this introduction online:
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf

I have copied some fragments here in case you do not have time to read it:

Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence, for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized,even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death. (2)

A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense," sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is. It withdraw sat a distance from us. Just as there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had loved months or years ago, perhaps we shall come even to desire what suddenly leaves us so alone. But the time has not yet come. Just one thing: that denseness and that strangeness of the world is the absurd.

Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man's own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this "nausea," as a writer of today calls it,is also the absurd. Likewise the stranger who at certain seconds comes to meet us in a mirror, the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in our own photographs is also the absurd. (5)

That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism,those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh. They have nothing to do with the mind. They negate its profound truth, which is to be enchained. In this unintelligible and limited universe, man's fate henceforth assumes its meaning. A horde of irrationals has sprung up and surrounds him until his ultimate end. In his recovered and now studied lucidity, the feeling of the absurd becomes clear and definite. I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together. This is all I can discern clearly in this measureless universe where my adventure takes place. Let us pause here. (7)

Lets take a break, then.

Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence, for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized,even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death.

I see. I've always wondered at the notion of the so-called illusions that you refer to. In what sense are illusions illusions? My personal preference is not to make, what to me is, the unhelpful distinction reality and illusions as seems to be the intent behind Camus' pronouncements on the world. My approach, if you can call it that, is to view reality as layered-cake so to speak - there are different levels of connecting with reality, each level requiring a different mindset, a different frame of mind, a different attitude, a different set of circumstances, with no level being less real than the other. The real-illusion dichotomous perspective on reality makes it seem like one is more preferable to the other as if one is closer to the truth and the other not. In my book, all the layers of the cake are truthful in their own way with not layer being preferable to another.

As for "healthy" men having thought of their own suicide, I've always wondered whether the entire field of psychiatry hasn't got things backwards. Look at all the suffering, pain, anguish, horrors, atrocities, taking place in the world. Switch on the TV, turn the pages of a paper - tragedy after tragedy is all you'll see. A "healthy" man - a man with even a modicum of empathy or common sense - would find it difficult, even impossible, to take all of that in and still remain calm, unaffected and happy. Yet, say the psychiatrists, depression, and what usually follows - suicide - is an illness and those who can go on living their lives as if the world is all hunky dory are considered "normal". In essence, the person with tears in faer eyes is more normal than the one who's smiling ear to ear. Take this however you want to but my main objective here is to point out that normal and sick, insofar as mental health is concerned, has been incorrectly defined.

A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense," sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is. It withdraw sat a distance from us. Just as there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had loved months or years ago, perhaps we shall come even to desire what suddenly leaves us so alone. But the time has not yet come. Just one thing: that denseness and that strangeness of the world is the absurd.

Again, I don't subscribe to the view that depends on a real-illusion dichotomy. As I said, there are many layers to truth, each has its own quality, character, worth, beauty, and so on. Come to think of it, even a layered-cake model seems a poor analogy since it connotes a hierarchy. What comes to close to what I want to convey is that of a multi-faceted object - reality has many sides to it and each has its own value, no side being greater/lesser than another. Nonetheless, awareness of how many faces reality has is integral to coming to terms with them.

Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man's own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this "nausea," as a writer of today calls it,is also the absurd. Likewise the stranger who at certain seconds comes to meet us in a mirror, the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in our own photographs is also the absurd. (5) — David Mo

At this point, I must a lodge a complaint as to the tediousness of all this - every point, if it is one, made so far has been built upon the foundation of the real-illusion duo which, as I reiterate here, is unhelpful and misses the point of what reality is - a man of a thousand faces, not one man wearing a thousand masks, hiding his true identity that needs work to uncover.

That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism,those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh. They have nothing to do with the mind. They negate its profound truth, which is to be enchained. In this unintelligible and limited universe, man's fate henceforth assumes its meaning. A horde of irrationals has sprung up and surrounds him until his ultimate end. In his recovered and now studied lucidity, the feeling of the absurd becomes clear and definite. I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together. This is all I can discern clearly in this measureless universe where my adventure takes place. Let us pause here. (7)

Let's pause indeed.

Sorry for the double post. My previous comments were, let's just say, unproductive for either of us.

Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence, for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized,even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death. (2)

It appears that I'll have to stick to my guns on the matter. Camus, if he's the writer concerned, has gone about proving his point - Absurdity - by splitting the world apart into two viz. the real and the illusory. This is an established tradition in philosophy - Plato's cave. Where the two have diverged in an important respect is that Camus claims the illusory has more meaning than the real; hence, the absurdity [of the real] and Plato believes the opposite, the real has more meaning than the illusory; hence, necessarily, the non-absurdity [of the real]. Who is correct? :chin:

Since both can't be correct and both make sense, we have a paradox in our hands. Ergo, my initial contention that dividing reality into real-illusion is flawed. It's better to look at reality as something with many sides to it and each side has its own worth, its own value, its own character, and so on. Given this view, Camus' argument fails because it depends on the real-illusion dichotomy and that we've seen leads to a paradox and so, is untenable.

Why? The only way to overcome the anxiety produced by a vital desire that cannot be satisfied is to stop having it. But I believe that this recipe cannot be maintained for too long. May the stoics forgive me. There are desires for justice, for love, for the absence of pain that one cannot suppress without amputating a part of oneself. And this would be bad faith. If a man is as impassive as a lettuce he is not a man, he is a lettuce. At the very least, a lettuce is not happy. And it is happiness we are talking about. Isn't it? — David Mo

I am not a stoic, but knowing that life is meaningless and there are no overarching principles or meaning in it is relieving. I say relieving because it can allow oneself to not be subject to other peoples' meaning in their own lives. Sometimes, in society, there seems to be pressure on children and teenagers to accept the world around them and conform to its meaning. However, as we know from human nature, humans are extremely unpredictable, impulsive, desire-filled, sometimes immoral, irrational, etc. As these children/teenagers enter the world upon adulthood they will soon realize this if they have not already. Yet, when they were growing up, there is a possibility that they witnessed many judgements on people that didn't conform to society's social constructs or meanings of life that we are 'supposed' to live up to.

This can be extremely troubling for a person. Why? It can lead to the anxiety of not living up to society's and certain social groups unrealistic expectation of the 'good individual.' The contradiction starts here in oneself. Most likely there are not many humans that can live up to these unrealistic/perfect standards, yet most in society judges them if they have missteps in life. So, accepting life is meaningless, can bring someone joy and relief, in my opinion, and it definitely has for me. I am only 25, but I have had a roller coaster of a life so far. I have been sober for a year now, but I have had my running with alcoholism. For addicts, they have seemed to have a conspicuous struggle that is pitted against these societal standards. While drinking all the time was depressing and anxiety-inducing so was being sober for the first 6-8 months. Why? Most people around me drink for pleasure, on the weekends, during the week at dinner, and any get-together or parties. If I want to be around family and friends, I have to be around people drinking. At first, it was uncomfortable and I had to overcome my urge to drink with these people. But becoming sober also decreased my list of friends in life. Nearly all of the friends I had when I drank soon disappeared. This made me feel as I was making a bad decision since I have always been a person to value friendships and hanging out with people. This then made me question the trust, loyalty, and support of those around me, thereby furthering the anxiety. Eventually, this lead to me just being depressed that I even had an alcohol problem in the first place. I started asking questions like: "How and where in my life led me to have a drinking problem? Where did my life go awry? Where did it all go wrong? Should I keep drinking and not stay sober? Why did God allow me to have this problem and hurt others along the way because of my drinking? Is it always going to be this hard, being the sober guy at the part this boring and annoying?" I then became angry about the entire drinking problem ever existing in my life and my self-contempt grew further. But, then something amazing happened, I became re-acquainted with reading existential philosophy and reads like The Myth of Sisyphus as well.

Philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ambert Camus, Jean-Pual Sartre, Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and their conclusions that life is meaningless all brought me joy. They gave convincing cases of paradox, contradiction, and absurdity of life and human existence. Absurd shit happens and there is nothing we can really do about it. People do crazy shit, no matter if we like or not, and that is just a part of life. This was comforting to me, especially with my drinking and my past knowing that people, and people just like me, are not perfect, and they do not live up to standards that societal groups/constructs try to pressure us to be. We are different, but also the same. We have a drinking problem that we hate and love, and we cannot get rid of it even if we wished it to go away. Knowing this and being reminded from existentialism how insane life and all human's desire for clarity and explanation really are was and are a relief. And this why I state that Camus and other existential conclusions have 'calmed' my anxiety and depression.

An intellectual pleasure and personal concern. 'Joy' is too strong a word that I reserve for personal relationships and other special circumstances.
In any case, it is not a book you can overlook. — David Mo

Very interesting. I definitely had an intellectual and personal pleasure from reading it, as well as joy. I 100% agree that it is not a book you can overlook.

I see. I've always wondered at the notion of the so-called illusions that you refer to. — TheMadFool

I am not the one who refers to illusions in those texts. They are by Camus. From the Introduction to The Myth of Sisyphus. Anyway, you centre your objection to Camus on the distinction between illusory and real. If you do not want to use those words you will have to use others to distinguish what is only in your head from what exists outside it.

An example: A thirsty voyager walks in the desert. He sees a mirage in the background and thinks it is an oasis. But when he reaches the place where he saw the mirage there is nothing but sand. The oasis was an illusion and the reality was the sand of the desert. Do you not accept this difference? Water can be drunk, but not sand. Does that make a little difference to you? Not for the voyager.

The concept of illusion in Camus has another collateral meaning that is expressed in English as 'wishful thinking'. That is to say, when illusion depends on a strong desire, it conditions beliefs. A typical effect is cognitive dissonance. It consists in looking for more or less inconsistent ad hoc hypotheses to save a belief that the facts refute. It is very typical in religions. In Camus' terms one can speak of a philosophy of lucidity versus an illusory philosophy.

Plato's cave. Where the two have diverged in an important respect is that Camus claims the illusory has more meaning than the real; — TheMadFool

I see that you have opened a new thread with this theme. If I have time I'll go over there.Here I will only say one thing: Plato also makes the distinction between real and illusory. The difference is that for him the real world was the ideal world. The name 'idea' leads to confusion. Plato's ideal world was not in the head of human beings but in a higher plane of existence. In philosophy the term 'idea' was adopted for that transcendent world. It would have been less confusing if the concept of 'form', which Plato uses, had been taken on.

But the fact that rationalist and empiricist philosophers do not agree on which things are real and which are not doesn't mean that the distinction between real and illusory is not made in both sides.

I am not a stoic, but knowing that life is meaningless and there are no overarching principles or meaning in it is relieving. — The Questioning Bookworm

You're not the first case I've met. But I find it hard to believe that you have never felt that the real world is indifferent or hostile to your most human desires and that this has not made you feel a sense of helplessness. This is the absurd.

If you do not want to use those words you will have to use others to distinguish what is only in your head from what exists outside it. — David Mo

That sounds like the same thing! A distinction without a difference.

I take the help of Plato only to make the case that all philosophers (makes me want to start a new branch of philosophy) without exception are of the view that truth, whatever it is (Camus' meaningless life included), and, most germane to our discussion, living by it (again, Camus' meaningless life as part of it) is, in that and by that only, meaningful.